I don’t care if you’re a Christian, a Jew, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Scientologist, a Mormon, a Discordian, a worshiper of Thor, Zeus, or Joe Pesci. Stop trying to revise history to favor your own religion.
The Founding Fathers specifically kept any mention of god, Jesus, the bible and any other religious icons out of the Constitution for a reason: the country they just came from had a national religion: the Church of England. Most of the Founding Fathers were religious dissenters: they didn’t want to belong to the Church of England–an institution with a reputation for murdering and torturing dissenters.
Therefore, no national religion.
Now, you could try to make the argument: “But the FF were Christians!” Fact is, most of them were deists (a codename for “atheist” when being an atheist could get you killed).
And please, tell me exactly where “freedom of speech” is a “Christian virtue?” How about freedom of religion? How about the right to bear arms, the right of free assembly, freedom of press, the right to a speedy trial (the right to any trial at all?)? Please open the Bible and show me where these things are listed–explicitly–from JHVH as rights and liberties?
Go on, keep looking.
Look some more.
I’ll wait.
In the meantime, the rest of us will show you English Common Law (which derives from old Viking property laws and legal procedure), the Magna Carta, Greek Democracy, and Hammurabi’s Code.
(A quick side note: anyone who doesn’t understand the importance of Viking law doesn’t understand the history of Western legal thinking. The Vikings were the first ones to come up with legal procedure. Evidence, testimony, prosecution, defense, jury of peers, all of that. Sure, it was primitive compared to what we have today, but the ECL owes a lot to it.)
Show me where the Bible gives us guidelines on how evidence should be presented. Show me the legal procedure for selecting a jury in Leviticus. Open up Deuteronomy and demonstrate the concept of “innocent until proven guilty.”
No, these concepts were not created by, nor are they exclusive to, Christians. In fact, if you want to look at “Christian legal procedure,” I suggest taking a look at the Salem witch trials, the Inquisition, and the deaths caused by the Protestant/Catholic clashes all through history.
Have Christians adopted principles such as these? Yes, of course they have. But these principles did not originate exclusively in Christian minds. In fact, most of them were first espoused by pagan voices. Greek Democracy. Viking Law. Babylon’s legal codes.
Let’s stop trying to re-write history to favor our own religion, okay? Let’s also stop doing it to win votes from those who would rather believe their own religion’s propaganda than open a history book.